A Bridge to History:
digitizing an architectural masterpiece
On Independence Day, 1874, with some 150,000 people looking on,
General William Tecumseh Sherman drove the final, ceremonial
railroad spike into the Eads Bridge, officially completing one of
the most spectacular feats in engineering history.
One of the more
»
than 650 original
Eads Bridge drawings
housed at Washington
It was the largest bridge the world had ever seen
University Libraries.
University Archives up to that time. It was the first bridge to span
the Mississippi River at St. Louis, where the water
stretched nearly a third of a mile wide. And it was
the first significant span of any kind to be built
using large quantities of mass-produced steel, a
new and unproven material in those days.
08 Today the Eads Bridge is one of several arteries
connecting St. Louis and the Metro East area in
Illinois. Every day, as many as 60,000 people drive,
librari e s
bike, or walk across its upper deck or ride com-
muter trains across the lower deck. So it might
be hard to appreciate the sense of wonder and
admiration many people felt for this monumental
u niv e rsit y
viaduct when it was first built.
Many prominent engineers and industrialists of
the age said this bridge could never be built. A
bridge of that size — with enough clearance for
washin g t o n
riverboat smokestacks, enough strength to support
By Aaron Welborn
Selected Facts
Dimensions
fully loaded railcars, and enough distance between
Spans: 502, 520, 502 feet
the supporting pillars to avoid obstructing river
Clearance: 50 feet above high water
traffic — was impossible.
Materials
The soundness and longevity of the bridge have
Steel: 2,390 tons
proven just how wrong they were. Today the Eads
Wrought iron: 3,156 tons
Bridge is as hard-working as ever and, along with
Timber decking: 806 tons
its 45-year-old neighbor, the Gateway Arch, is a
St. Louis landmark. Stone masonry: 97,571 cubic yards 09
Still, any 137-year-old bridge needs maintenance Costs at the time of construction
1 1
to keep it in working order, and the Eads Bridge Superstructure: $2,122,781
sprin g
has been updated many times over the years. Foundations: $3,254,861
Now, thanks to federal stimulus funds, the bridge
Evie Hemphill
is being updated again, and the Washington Total cost: $6,536,729
|
University Libraries are playing a small but impor-
1 0
tant and rather unusual part.
f all
A Blueprint for Preservation “I have haunted the river every night lately, where I could get a look
The Bi-State Development Agency (Metro), at the bridge by moonlight. It is indeed a structure of perfection and
which operates the MetroLink light rail along the
bridge’s lower deck, is undertaking a substantial beauty unsurpassable, and I never tire of it.”
— Wa lt W h i t m a n , O c t o b e r 1 8 7 9 j o u r n a l e n t r y
 Evie Hemphill
rehabilitation of this historic landmark.
Famous Firsts
When it was completed in 1874, the Eads Bridge was
10 considered an engineering marvel. It was the longest bridge
in the world at that time, and the first significant structure
of any kind to be built with steel.
librari e s
Here’s a list of other record-breaking Eads Bridge firsts:
– Longest arches. The bridge’s three supporting arches
(two of them spanning 502 feet, and the third measuring
u niv e rsit y
520 feet) were 200 feet longer than any arch previously
constructed.
– Deepest pneumatic caissons. In addition to marking the
first large-scale use of pneumatic caissons in the U.S.,
washin g t o n
the construction of the Eads Bridge involved the deepest
excavations conducted by hand anywhere. The caissons are
still among the deepest ever sunk for a large structure.
The City of St. Louis rehabbed the bridge’s upper
road deck in 2003, and the bridge’s arch trusses
remain structurally sound. But the decks supporting
rail and highway traffic require periodic replace-
ment near the typical end of service life — 80
years — and the current rail deck has been in
service since the 1920s.
With funds from the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (the “stimulus bill”), the aging
rail deck will be completely replaced. The entire
superstructure will be sandblasted and repainted.
The MetroLink track system will be replaced,
including rails and ties. The catenary wire system,
which transmits electric power to the light-rail
vehicles, will be upgraded. All told, the project will
cost roughly $25 million and create an estimated
875 construction jobs.
In 2010, Metro contracted with the engineering
firm TranSystems to begin initial repairs on the
bridge. Anyone looking for detailed structural
information about the Eads Bridge must consult
the originals. That led TranSystems to get in touch
with the Libraries’ University Archives, which
houses more than 650 original architectural and
engineering drawings of the Eads Bridge, dating
back to its construction. Some of the drawings
are as long as six feet. The detailed plans — hand-
drawn in ink on starched linen — were used by
the engineers and craftsmen who worked on the
bridge between 1867 and 1874. Some 570 drawings
were jointly donated to the University and the
National Museum of Transportation by the
Terminal Railroad Association in 1974. An addi-
tional 93 drawings, owned by the American Bridge
Company, are in the Archives on permanent
deposit. Many of them bear the signature of chief
engineer James Buchanan Eads himself.
– First American to die of “the bends” — James Riley.
Fourteen more would die, and many more would be
crippled for life.
– Tubes. First use of tubular steel for bridge support.
– Cantilevers. First bridge built using cantilever support
methods exclusively. The traditional method of building an
arch bridge for thousands of years was to use falsework,
wooden framing that held the arch in place until it was
structurally sound.
– Replaceable parts. First use of replaceable mass-produced
components in a bridge design.
– Recognition. James B. Eads was the first U.S. engineer to be
honored with the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts
in London.
“This was Captain Eads, an original genius minus scientific knowledge
to guide his erratic ideas of things mechanical. He was seemingly one of
those who wished to have everything done upon his own original plans.
That a thing had been done in one way before was sufficient to cause its
rejection. … A man may be possessed of great ability, and be a charming,
interesting character, as Captain Eads undoubtedly was, and yet not
be able to construct the first bridge of five hundred feet span over the For a sample of the
digitized collection,
Mississippi River, without availing himself of the scientific knowledge
go to http://library.wustl.
and practical experience of others.” edu/units/spec/archives/
—Andrew Carnegie, The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, 1920 photos/eads/.
Consulting the original drawings presents a problem
for such complicated jobs as the large-scale renova-
tion work Metro has planned. On the one hand,
the drawings are extremely rare and fragile. Due to
their age, significance, and cumbersome size, they
require special — and limited — handling. On the
other hand, the engineers doing the renovations
need a reliable set of working plans onsite. A
surveyor could be hired to completely re-survey
the bridge, but only at considerable time and cost.
The solution was for the Eads Bridge drawings to
be digitized to the highest historic preservation
standards, with Metro helping with the Libraries’
costs of doing so. Now, Metro has a set of digital
drawings to work from, and the Libraries are grad-
ually making the drawings publicly available, allow-
ing anyone to consult, use, or just admire them.
“We’ve always wanted to have the Eads Bridge
plans digitized,” says University Archivist Sonya Bob Lyner and Tom Wobbe
»
of St. Louis-based Digital
Rooney. “It’s been on our wish list for a long time. Beyond practical use, the Eads Bridge drawings Preservation prepare one
But we never could devote the resources to it until have aesthetic value. The drawings are stunning of the original drawings
now. This was the perfect opportunity to preserve for high-resolution
examples of old-fashioned draftsmanship. They scanning. Aaron Welborn
the originals and make them more accessible. And document the unique challenges of the engineering
it’s in the name of a great cause — preserving the achievement and also the remarkable imagination
Eads Bridge itself.” that went into it. To look at them is to look at
history in the making. 11
The newly digitized drawings are already being
put to practical use. In November and December, An Unlikely Solution
1 1
five different firms contacted the Archives to The story of the Eads Bridge has been the subject
request some of the digital files as they began the
sprin g
of numerous books, articles, websites, and at least
bid process for painting the bridge. And, according one film. By the mid-19th century, the river that
to Rooney, the digitized drawings will appeal formerly offered St. Louis so many economic
|
to a wide range of people, not just engineers. advantages had become an obstacle to further
1 0
Historians, architects, antiquarians, students of growth, moating the city off from eastern commerce.
f all
art, and even casual viewers are sure to find them Steamboats were no longer the quickest way of
interesting and full of rich detail. transporting goods cross-country. The railroad was
the new king, and Chicago had already established
itself as the new transportation hub of the Midwest.

Images of the celebrated
»
Eads Bridge appear on
the covers of sheet music
connected to the region.
These three pieces, by Earl
Hines, W.C. Handy, and
C.D. Wilson, are held in
Washington University’s
Gaylord Music Library.
12
librari e s
u niv e rsit y
washin g t o n
In 1865, St. Louis’s political and industrial leaders the objections of powerful riverboat interests, who
decided they needed a bridge that would carry the insisted that any bridge construction must not
railroad across the river and put their city back in impede the passage of ships up and down the river.
the action. There was only one problem: no one Astonishingly, the man who came up with the
had ever built a bridge that long. Moreover, it was solution had never built a bridge in his life.
believed no one could. Most railroad bridges were
James Buchanan Eads had made his fortune sal-
constructed of heavy wrought iron, and one out
vaging wrecks from the bottom of the Mississippi.
of four collapsed. Engineers
He designed his own ships and a special diving bell
of that time did not inspire
for this work. During the Civil War, Eads designed
the same public confidence
and built the first ironclads used by the Union. He
they do today.
was an expert on ships, rivers, and river bottoms,
A radical design solution but he was a beginner when it came to bridges.
was needed, one that Ironically, this very inexperience might have
could overcome the worked in Eads’ favor.
inherent technical
Eads came up with the unconventional idea of
difficulties and answer
using steel arches to span the river. At that time,
steel was not a commonly used building material.
Although it is stronger, harder,
and lighter than iron,
only recently had Henry
Bessemer discovered a
way to manufacture steel
cheaply.
Eads’ plan faced many
skeptics, including the steel
baron Andrew Carnegie him-
self, who ultimately furnished
the steel used in the Eads
Bridge. To inspire confidence
and build support for his
design, Eads asked the noted
mathematician and Washington
University professor William
Chauvenet to check his structural
calculations. Chauvenet confirmed
that Eads’ numbers checked out.
“Here was desolation, indeed … The towboat
and the railroad had done their work, and done
it well and completely. The mighty bridge, stretching along over
our heads, had done its share in the slaughter and spoliation. Remains
of former steamboatmen told me, with wan satisfaction, that the bridge
doesn’t pay. Still, it can be no sufficient compensation to a corpse, to
know that the dynamite that laid him out was not of as good quality as
it had been supposed to be.” — M a r k T w a i n , L i f e o n t h e M i s s i s s i p p i , 1 8 8 3
James B. Eads: Captain of the Mississippi
A personal connection to rivers and their commerce formed
early in life for James Buchanan Eads (1820-1887).
When he was a boy, Eads’ family moved to St. Louis, where
they planned to set up a dry goods store. But the riverboat
that carried them there burned, along with their belongings
and stocked goods. Eads then left school to begin working
as a store clerk at age 13. He spent time in the shop owner’s
library above the store, reading books on physical science
and engineering. At the age of 18 he started working on a
Mississippi riverboat.
Scores of boats had succumbed to the great river, and at
the age of 22 Eads invented a vessel specifically designed
to salvage goods and remains from sunken boats along the
deep riverbed. Eads soon earned his fortune by retrieving
valuable cargo from the bottom of the Mississippi.
After almost 500 dives, Eads left the salvaging business to
marry and to start a more traditional business venture — a
glass factory. But the promising plans failed, and Eads soon
returned to the river, this time inventing equipment strong
enough to pump an entire sunken hull to the surface. Eads
re-retired from the river in 1860, after suffering the effects of
“the bends” from his many deep dives and being diagnosed
with tuberculosis.
Another unusual aspect of Eads’ design was the
use of cantilevers to construct the supporting arches.
For centuries, the traditional method of building
an arch involved first building a wooden frame,
which would support the curving structure while
it was being erected. This would be difficult to do
in the broad and unpredictable Mississippi River,
so Eads devised a new method. He would start by
building two massive stone piers in the middle of
the river that would serve as the foundation for
the arches. Then, using cantilevers for support,
the legs of each arch would be assembled from the
bottom up, curving toward each other until they
met in the middle. It was an ingenious approach
to a tough engineering problem, and it had the
added benefit of allowing riverboats to move freely
while the bridge was taking shape overhead.
Under the Mighty Mississippi
Not every aspect of the bridge construction process
went so smoothly. The biggest challenge Eads
faced was securing a strong foundation. Unless
the bridge sat on solid bedrock, it risked collapse.
But the bedrock beneath the Mississippi River was
some 95 feet below the water’s surface, deep
underneath the riverbed. Digging a hole under-
water through layers and layers of sand and mud
would be no easy feat.
This second retirement was
short-lived. As the Civil War
approached, Eads recognized
the key role that the
Mississippi would play in the
conflict, and he proposed,
designed, and personally
financed the first ironclad
gunboats for the North. Two
years after the war’s end,
when Eads decided to build
his first — and the world’s
largest — bridge, his experience
with the depths and currents of
the Mississippi was a critical factor,
in addition to his knowledge of iron and
steel.
Library of Congress
The bridge’s long and challenging construction period
lasted seven years, leaving Eads exhausted and in failing
health. But his brilliant plans for building the bridge had
worked. And the Eads Bridge, while his most well-known
feat, was hardly his last invention, nor his last interaction
with the Mississippi. Eads went on to successfully engineer
a navigation channel for the city of New Orleans and
remained a consultant for docks, canals, and other projects
around the world.
To solve the problem, Eads came up with the idea
of using pneumatic caissons, essentially large pres-
surized chambers sunk into the riverbed. When
the caissons were anchored in place, workmen
descended through a series of airlocks and began
digging out the sand underneath. Highly pressur-
ized air was pumped in to counterbalance the
water pressure bearing down on the caisson walls.
Meanwhile, up at the water’s surface, another
team of workers began building stone piers on top
of the caissons. As they piled up more stone, the
caissons sank deeper through the mud, which the
workers down below kept shoveling out till they
struck bedrock. Eads had seen this method of pier 13
construction used in Europe, but never at such
great depths.
1 1
sprin g
The method worked, but it came with a high cost.
Men working down in the pressurized caissons
began writhing in agony upon resurfacing.
|
1 0
Doctors dubbed the mysterious ailment “caisson
disease,” but no one understood the cause. Today,
f all
we know that Eads’ workmen were suffering from
decompression sickness, commonly called “the
bends.” The condition is caused by nitrogen
dissolving in the bloodstream under high pressure
at great depths. Inside the caissons where the men

Library of Congress
David Kilper/WUSTL
The bridge in a hand-
»
colored Currier & Ives
worked, the air pressure sometimes reached twice
lithograph c. 1874 (top)
as high as the inside of a car tire. When the men
and in a 2009 photograph.
returned to normal atmospheric pressure, the
14 dissolved nitrogen in their bodies expanded and
formed bubbles in their blood, veins, and tissue,
producing intense pain.
librari e s
In the end, 15 workers died of “caisson disease”
while digging the foundations for the Eads Bridge,
two were paralyzed for life, and 77 others were
severely afflicted. At least 20 percent of the 600
u niv e rsit y
people who worked below the water’s surface
became seriously ill. Eads’ own doctor, enlisted
to try to determine what could be done, endured
terrible pain after resurfacing from a caisson. It
washin g t o n
was a steep price to pay to provide a river crossing.
But the lessons learned helped future bridge
builders devise better systems for handling
pressures at such depths and minimizing the
health risks to workers.
When it was finally completed, the Illinois and
St. Louis Bridge (as it was initially known) was
hailed as an architectural tour de force. To prove
the strength of his design, Eads had 14 fully loaded
locomotives drive back and forth across it, stopping
in the middle of each span to the applause of
admiring crowds. The most dramatic display of
stability happened when a circus elephant was
directed across the bridge. A popular superstition
held that elephants possess a sixth sense about
unsteady structures and will not set foot on them.
When the elephant walked all the way from
St. Louis to Illinois and back, the public was ready
to follow suit.
More importantly, the Eads Bridge helped usher in
a new era of prosperity for St. Louis. It opened the
city to eastern rail lines and facilitated the flow of
people back and forth across the water. Although
the bridge cost investors more than they ever made
from it, the city reaped immeasurable rewards
from its brand new connection to the world. James
Buchanan Eads became a household name, and
news of his bridge traveled around the world,
inspiring engineers, politicians, poets, painters,
and countless others to applaud this latest proof
of man’s mastery over nature.
Accessing History in the Making
Fast-forward to 2010. Across town, at Washington
University’s West Campus Library, Bob Lyner
and Tom Wobbe engaged in their own version of
bridge building. Only instead of a river, they were
engineering a way across time.
Together, Lyner and Wobbe make up Digital
Preservation, a local company specializing in digi-
tizing historic documents. The Libraries brought
them in to scan the nearly 700 original Eads
Bridge drawings that reside in University Archives.
On a typical workday, Lyner carefully spreads one
of the oversized, yellowing linen rectangles on the
floor beneath an array of high-powered lights. It
shows a cross-section of a single bridge compo-
nent, hand-drawn and lettered in black and red
ink. Suspended from above, a large-format digital
camera snaps a photo of the drawing and sends
it to a computer across the room, where Wobbe
checks the image for sharpness and color accuracy.
These high-resolution scans are stored on the
Libraries’ computer servers, while the original
drawings are archived safely away in a climate-
controlled vault. Even if the physical drawings
eventually turn to dust, the digital files will still
be there, as clear and usable as ever.
“About this time two great engineering works were under way. One, the triple arch bridge
to cross the Mississippi at St. Louis, Capt. Eades [sic], chief engineer; the other, the great
cantilever bridge which was to cross the Chasm of the Kentucky River, C. Shaler Smith,
chief engineer … Here was Romance, here again was man, the great adventurer, daring
to think, daring to have faith, daring to do. Here again was to be set forth to view man
in his power to create beneficently. Here were two ideas widely differing in kind. Each
was emerging from a brain, each was to find realization. One bridge was to cross a great
river, to form the portal of a great city, to be sensational and architectonic. The other was
to take form in the wilderness, and abide there; a work of science without concession.”
— L o u i s H . S u l l i va n , T h e A u t o b i o g r a p h y o f a n I d e a , 1 9 2 4
“It’s a privilege to work with
gorgeous works of art like these,”
says Lyner. “What makes it fun is
that you get to see material only
the archivist usually sees. You
can try to describe something
like this to people, but until they
actually see it for themselves,
they can’t appreciate it.”
The drawings reveal an incred-
ible amount of detail, right down
to the size of each coupling and
bolt. Wobbe says it reminds him
of another project they recently
worked on, digitizing architec-
tural drawings of the Gateway
Arch at the Jefferson National
Expansion Memorial in down-
town St. Louis. “Now we know
enough to build our own Arch
and our own bridge,” he jokes.
Indeed, now that the drawings
are digitized, anyone will be able
to study them. A web interface A chromolithograph
»
(Compton & Co., c. 1874)
will be rolled out later on, and St. Louis and Metro, the agencies responsible for
based on photographs
the entire collection of drawings will be available maintaining and preserving the Eads Bridge,” of the bridge’s construc-
15
online for every engineer and amateur pontist he says. tion. Library of Congress
(yes, there’s a word for bridge lovers) who wants to Best of all, the actual Eads Bridge will be made
see them. According to University Archivist Sonya
1 1
nearly as good as new. When the renovation is
Rooney, the Eads Bridge project is “a model of
sprin g
complete, James Buchanan Eads’ legacy will be
what can be accomplished through collaboration.”
secure for that much longer, continuing to inspire
Metro’s Chris Poehler, senior vice president for
confidence in commuters and elephants alike.
engineering and new systems development,
|
1 0
emphasizes the project’s functional role. This article was written by Aaron Welborn, former writer
f all
and editor for the Washington University Libraries, with
“Washington University has been a reliable partner contributions by Evie Hemphill and Joy Lowery. Aaron
in preserving these valuable documents not is now director of communications for Duke University
only for the public interest, but for the City of
Libraries, Durham, North Carolina.